Ariane Tockner, Head of International Content Management at the Austrian National Tourist Office, will be joining us on the 30th and 31st of March in Copenhagen for the second edition of the Content | Campus.

She will be talking about how the Austrian National Tourist Office have been completely rethinking their approach to content over the past year. Ariane will be giving insights about the processing of making this organisation-wide shift, how content is managed today and the wider context of what this has meant for their approach to digital transformation and a digital-first culture.

Early Bird tickets offering 20% discount on Standard tickets are available until 10th of February, register now!

Quick introduction to yourself and the work you do at the Austrian National Tourist Office.

After my studies of both tourism marketing and English literature I worked in various fields of tourism, including a city hotel and the Austrian Hotel Association. For the past 17 years I’ve been with ANTO, working in various fields within the organisation. Starting in January 2016 I’ve taken over the lead of the International Content Management Team which means that I’m responsible for the managing and controlling of ANTO’s worldwide content process.

How many people are part of the Austrian National Tourist Office and content team in particular and what is the main focus of your organisation?

There are around 200 people working for ANTO in 20 offices around the world with a range of activities including above-the-line advertising for tourism country Austria, media cooperations, the production of special-interest brochures, the organisation of fairs and sales platforms as well as cooperations with local tour operators, travel agents and trainings for the travel agency and event sector.

There are currently 9 people in the newly established content team.

Tell us more about the thinking behind the new approach of having a content team in your organisation?

The Austrian National Tourist Office is Austria’s national tourism organisation. Its main objective is to secure and expand Austria's competitiveness in cooperation with all Austrian tourism partners. By doing so, ANTO contributes essentially to increasing Austria's market share in international tourism.

Core Competencies of the Austrian National Tourist Office are:

Development of the brand "Holidays in Austria": This brand differentiates Austria from other holiday destinations and conveys the emotional added value of a stay in Austria;

Opening up the internationally most promising markets through innovative and modern marketing;

You have introduced a new content strategy - tell us more about the new approach to your content strategy and what has changed?

The main strength of our new content strategy is that it’s a centrally managed process divided into four crucial phases: the planning, production, distribution and monitoring of content. Despite these steps being controlled by one central team, the individual functional tasks are carried out by people from all over the organisation.

The content strategy guarantees that the overall goal is met: ANTO knows which content is relevant for the target group and produces this content applicable to all media channels. ANTO produces and curates content according to its brand concept.

How is your central content team working with the market teams on a day to day basis?

The content process – which can be understood as a kind of road-map – provides the central content team as well as the market teams with a well-designed structure describing each step in their cooperation. There are numerous stages within the year-long process when there is active and intensive exchange. An example would be the momentum of topic finding which is done in close collaboration.

Regular content process meetings with representatives of both the central content team, other teams within the organisation and members of the market teams help to solve current issues and make sure that the process is on its way.

How are you creating and managing content to tell the stories of Holidays in Austria?

What we look at initially are the cravings and needs of our target group from a rather psychological point of view. Once we’ve identified those needs we elaborate how Holidays in Austria might respond to those needs. An example: someone might crave for inner balance or getting in the flow. The answer Holidays in Austria could give to that longing is summed up in a theme by the name of “the magic of hiking” represented in pilgrim’s paths which perfectly enable you to regain your inner balance. In that sense there’s a close link between the target group’s desires in life and the solutions Austria can give.

Once we’ve identified our main themes and stories various production teams start out to produce content for text, image and video. Production is performed both in-house as well as in collaboration with outside agencies or freelancers, journalists, influencers etc.

Transformation is a big topic for your team - how are you fostering a digital-first culture in your team and organisation?

One of ANTO’s key goals is to be successful as an efficient digital content platform. In order to accomplish that goal we have to provide high-quality, highly relevant and media-versatile online-content and involve users on our far-reaching platforms. In addition content will be distributed on external platforms in order to multiply our reach and effect.

One of our teams is something of an in-house innovation lab focussing on digital media and innovations both on a technical as well as on a textual level.

What are some of the outcomes/learnings/results so far of your new content workflow and strategy?

We’re on a good way. Innovation in the digital world happens so fast however, that we have to keep an open eye for new trends and adjust our strategy accordingly. We’ve just launched a social media monitoring and listening tool which will help us to even better and faster respond to the world.

Why should DMOs not miss your talk at the Content | Campus?

Many DMOs are faced with the same question: to content or not to content. And if they do, they often start from scratch. At ANTO we’ve have actually set up a unique content process and positioned a specialised team within the organisation's structure. I believe that other DMOs can learn from our experience.

Discussion

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Who we are?

The Digital Tourism Think Tank is the name given to this initiative, which aims at providing thought leadership to the tourism industry in digital marketing best practice. This project was created by Nick Hall, Managing Director at
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